


puppy knuckles

by lunarlovely



Category: The Last of Us (Video Games)
Genre: Bartender Dina, Dina is pining HARD for this mystery woman, Domestic Bliss, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Supernatural World, future smut, modern? setting, patching eachother up, spooky Ellie, these two are infatuated with eachother
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-29
Updated: 2020-08-29
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:07:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26117740
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lunarlovely/pseuds/lunarlovely
Summary: Dina memorizes that feeling in her bones, the tremble of this gentle giant, the strong arms that are encircling her now. Firm hands pressing into the small of her back, fingers against fabric against skin. The shorter girl breathes one last time before leaning away and smiling brightly.“Thanks for the save, sweetheart.”“Was nothin’,” Dina watches rosy peach filaments spread across freckles, and she refrains from wiping the raindrops off them. To feel this woman’s face pressed into her palm, to trace a pattern from her cheek and down her jaw. To taste rain off lips like the warm cement freshly showered upon.She glances from parted lips back to blazing green, an intensity like burning embers.Dina kisses the peaches instead, “I’m serious,” she whispers against her cheek. Giving the back of the woman’s neck a soft scratch, she slips the box of bottles off the bar and begins to stock a different shelf.Or..Dina works at a magical bar for those with features inhuman, abilities otherworldly, and beings ungodly. And yet the most mysterious thing in her life is the curious woman named Ellie.
Relationships: Dina & Ellie (The Last of Us), Dina/Ellie (The Last of Us)
Comments: 17
Kudos: 78





	puppy knuckles

“I don’t like to talk, 

‘cause talkings not cool

But when we’re together,

I feel like a fool.”

  
  
  
  


chapter one

The city is dark where she works, continuous downpour turning the cement black and cloudy skies to ashy grey. The only sources of light are the scattering of neon signs, their soft glows illuminating the ever-present fog, and speckling off droplets of rain. Some old and flickering, others new and buzzing with energy, a constant flow of electrons in their circuit. 

The bar sits in an alleyway between two off the block streets, far from downtown but no where near the outlying suburbs. Its door tucked between a craft store that closed down a decade ago and a ramen hut who usually still sees a steady stream of empty stomachs.

If you’re not careful though, you’ll miss it. A bar left unfound unless by wanting eyes.

Dina has worked as the place's bartender since she became old enough to do so, and even secretly before then. The tavern-like interior has become home for the woman, her blood and tears soaked into the wooden floorboards, running along the grain of the walls and into the steaming pipes. She never had a choice really, to work here or not, but she made do with what she was given.

Glowing bottles of prismatic fractals line the walls on the interior, giving the small place an underwater feeling. A bubbly cauldron of greens and reds, with the darker liquids taking on almost inky depths. 

Iron-caged lanterns hang from the ceiling, their chains swaying with the doors occasional breeze but never rattling. Their fires ever-burning, not even the strongest gust quelling their flames. And they reflect the glass bottles beautifully, echoing whispers of color along the patrons and the wooden tables below. 

This bar isn’t like most — hell, it isn’t like any. 

The place is run by a brute of a man, Hue Ryker. Who, outside the bar, appears as a tall, burly man with a gruffly beard. But once inside, once past the creaking door that expels any blinding spell, Hue’s features transform into the hideous beast of a boar, tusked teeth standing inches high against his carmeling fur, a long snout protruding under black malicious eyes. One arm ending in a hard hoof of keratin, the other a mangled appendage of fingers, bigger than the size of Dina’s head. 

Hue has been the overseer of Dina for more than fifteen years, taking her in as an orphan when she was just a child. He, in no way, resembled a father-like figure, and instead put her to work to help his underground operations and criminal activity. The bar was just a front to his business in the back. 

But, be it as it may be, the bar is still a sanctuary for all those deemed abnormal in the city's growing population of normalcy. Those with features inhuman, abilities otherworldly, beings ungodly.

Patrons of all walks of life find themselves entering this bar, and none have ever known how they found it. 

_Where_ they found it.

Dina looks behind her as a gentle voice calls from the bar and she turns, facing a small woman, the eye on her cheek watching carefully, respectfully. The woman smiles, her face sagging with decades of age, almost drooping off her cheekbones with the shaky effort.

“ _I’ve heard_ ,” a whisper like an echoing scream, scratching along the walls around her, “ _that you carry Remington’s Bourbon_.”

Dina has to breathe through her nose to reply, her ears numb to the sound as she shakes, “you can find some through there,” and points a hand towards the door in the back. Her voice silent in her own ears, existence is known only to vibrations in her throat and the licks of air against her tongue.

Dina watches the woman make her way to the back, her puny frame having to reach high for the doorknob before she exits the current room. Muscles seized by the jaw-ripping voice of the leaving woman, a lungful of air enters her body and Dina has to catch herself on the counter, gaining awkward glances from the seemingly unperturbed customers around her. 

Oxygen never tasted so sweet. 

She only takes a second to catch her bearings before continuing with work, her body used to the unexpected — the unimaginable.

Dina often wonders who she sends into the back, what they are capable of, and why they are needed by her boss. Why some of them never leave that door again.

These thoughts are never satisfied though, and the countless people she’s seen, the countless unexplainable events she’s witnessed, are so normal to her now that her peaked curiosity has learned to live unanswered. Learned to be satiated by the knowledge of their existence, and their existence alone.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


Dina stands a couple feet above even the tallest patrons — stragglers still hanging around the bar on a late November evening. Grounded on a rickety ladder that still does its job after twenty or more long years of use, her balance adjusts its feet as she juggles a box of liquor in one hand and colorful bottles in the other. Their viscous liquids reflect soft glows of greens, purples, and reds against her skin. Reflections dancing fluidly with the flickering firelight. 

Heavy clinks of replete bottles chorus the murmurs behind her, whispers with the occasional bellowing laugh, gibbering slurs of the intoxicated. A slow bass line crackles from the low speakers, barely audible in the quiet night, drowned by the crashing of water on the bay windows. Dina’s ears prick to the distant rumbles of thunder, a heavier storm than most this evening.

After a quick sweep of the room from her perch, she watches a fellow at the bar slip his hand through the wooden counter, bunching his grey jacket sleeve as his arm dips past his wrist.

“Samuel,” Dina bites, her tone firm with a hint of knowing scold. 

The man lifts his head in her direction, his ghostly eyes looking past her — through her. A toothless smirk creeping its way along his wrinkled cheeks. His hand materializes out of the bar top and rests back on its surface, the knobby knuckles bounce as he taps a jauntless rhythm.

“If you want one of Jim’s pickles you have to ask and _pay_ just like everyone else.” She can see the sealed barrel of fermented vegetables right beneath the leaning gentleman. It’s contents stirring after his touch. She shivers, never again eating from that lot.

Dina catches the creaking of the front door behind the grumbling man, as she turns back to her task. The rush of wind sweeping through the room and tangling in the loose curls of her bun. Pouring rain echoes louder throughout the wooden interior for the brief second it takes before the door can click shut. 

A hooded figure steps in, dripping from the weather, and it takes Dina only a second to recognize the glowing green irises shadowed beneath. She glances up as hands pull down her hood, a calm but barely noticeable smile tracing the girl’s features once forest greens meet Dina’s dark bourbons. Their eyes waltzing in a familiar greeting. 

Dina continues to smile softly to herself as she turns fully back towards the wall. The soggy woman remaining present in her thoughts while she lifts the green bottle in hand and feels a sharp _crack_ echo beneath her feet. 

The ladder is dropping before she has time to register the sound. Her grounding point now weightless as empty air comes up to seize her.

A breath stills in her throat as a warm presence apparates at Dina’s back, her form lacking the chance to sink above sea level before a hand is at her waist. Catching her in a grip as solid as stone, without a dip or even a slight give to gravity. She feels the press of someone’s chest against her back as she lets the embrace carry her — absorb her — _free her_.

“Careful, now, Miss Dina.” The woman’s tongue firm in the way it dances around her consonants. Husky in its gravely tone, sultry in its whisper.

A shiver races down Dina’s back, extending from her neck, down her spine, pooling in her chest and flowing even to the tips of her fingers. 

Another hand reaches out to catch the box of bottles and they clank harshly with the landing, but the lack of sharp shattering and seeping bubbles tells Dina that they’re safe.

The shorter woman doesn’t realize her nails are digging into the arm around her stomach until her feet touch Earth again. And she breathes as she lets go of the secure appendage, turning in the woman’s grip to worried pupils.

Oh, how they look at her so, like she’s the turning point of calamity.

Dina feels like the ground itself in the way she remains locked in a gaze of hazy green.

“ _Ellie_ ,” a released breath.

Dina hears the front door finally click shut across the room, and the invading rumble of rain washes away with it. 

The tall woman cracks a smile, one of relief after held intensity, after the storage of waiting. And only now does Dina realize she’s soaked with dripping rain from her savior. It’s like ice against a burn and her shirt begins to stick unpleasantly.

“Sorry, I got you wet,” Ellie mumbles sheepishly, looking down at the girl in her arms and the combination of their soaked clothing.

Dina rolls her eyes with a scoff and wraps her arms around the girl’s neck, breathing in the smell of cedar and smoky rain.

“You dork, don’t ever apologize for that,” Dina’s lips graze the skin of Ellie’s neck and it’s her turn to shiver now.

Dina memorizes that feeling in her bones, the tremble of this gentle giant, the strong arms that are encircling her now. Firm hands pressing into the small of her back, fingers against fabric against skin. The shorter girl breathes one last time before leaning away and smiling brightly. 

“Thanks for the save, sweetheart.”

“Was nothin’,” Dina watches rosy peach filaments spread across freckles, and she refrains from wiping the raindrops off them. To feel this woman’s face pressed into her palm, to trace a pattern from her cheek and down her jaw. To taste rain off lips like the warm cement freshly showered upon.

She glances from parted lips back to blazing green, an intensity like burning embers. 

Dina kisses the peaches instead, “ _I'_ _m serious_ ,” she whispers against her cheek. Giving the back of the woman’s neck a soft scratch, she slips the box of bottles off the bar and begins to stock a different shelf.

She can feel the burning gaze against her back like laying in an afternoon sun. A solidifying pressure of perfect warmth.

Bottles clink together again as she hears Ellie’s stool scrape and slide into place. Dina glances towards the broken ladder behind the bar and puzzles for a second, mentally mapping the path from the front door and past the bar gate.

The journey it would be for Ellie to run to her.

The fact that the door hadn’t so much as shut before Dina was in her arms. 

She shrugged, her curiousness ebbed but not flowed. 

Her hand finds the bottle of Ellie’s favorite in the freezer and she’s pouring a glass over rocks and sliding it towards the woman before question. 

“It’s on the house tonight,” Dina winks.

“Isn’t it always?” Ellie smirks back, her dimple rising and a playful fury dancing in the woods. Her voice is ashes and Dina’s cheeks flare.

But she plays it off skillfully, gleeful nonchalance, and returns to helping someone else that just pulled up a stool. Trying to ignore the spreading buzz in her chest and the fading touch of Ellie’s hands against her body.

Dina pushes the wandering thoughts further and further into her mind, trying to quell their growing flames.

_Calloused fingers on her waist, on her skin. Wondering low, tucking under clothing. Traveling along the ridges of her spine and down the dip of her stomach._

Dina has to breathe and takes a long drink of water from her bottle under the counter before turning back towards Ellie.

The woman watches her approach with eyes acutely aware, appreciative in their roam, but kind enough not to linger. The burning green intensity behind them never goes unread by Dina — and though the woman looks at everything this way, a centralizing focal point, an all-encompassing depth of understanding overcast in shades of cedar — the dark-haired woman can’t help but feel flustered and broken apart by her gaze. As if this curious woman can tear her down piece by piece, reading every scrap of her, every note scribbled in the margins, can read her thoughts behind her eyes like a neverending story.

Dina can’t help but feel completely and utterly _seen_ by this woman.

The forest eyes lock onto hers and dip, quick glances of curious adoration before they connect with her’s again. Dina can see the nervousness written into the other woman’s skin as her hands fidget, clenching onto loose sweater sleeves, twisting the fabric between fingertips. The cool demeanor her shoulders hold tells a different story to the unknowing eye, one Dina believed until she got to know the quiet girl. Until she noticed the uncomfortable squirms and awkward wording — hands never staying still for more than a couple seconds. 

Dina adored all of it.

A frown dips on smiling lips as deep bruises catch her eyes, trailing from the woman’s eye sockets and down to her neck. Her hand is cupping the tall girl’s chin before she even realizes. Slow fingers running gently along her jaw, a thumb tracing the black bruises and the yellow rims they grow.

“Fuck, rough one at work today?” Dina shakes her head, “Hue works you too hard.” A deep sigh that fills their space, the shorter woman pretending not to notice the way Ellie has begun to lean into her touch, eyes fluttering briefly as their intensity wavers. Dina can feel the moment Ellie catches herself, can feel the locking of joints as the woman tenses. 

But Dina can always read the trembling in her shoulders and the hunger locked away in the woods. Her green eyes grow darker as pupils expand in the low light.

“It’s nothing more than usual,” Ellie mumbles with a shrug, the smallest tilt of her head. Dina’s hand slips away.

“Bullshit,” she chuckles as trained movements begin to wash glasses across the way, “you barely walked around with marks like this and now it’s almost every week. It’s either Hue,” a pointed look and a smirk, “or you’re getting sloppy.”

Ellie almost looks hurt by her words as she quips, “I’m never sloppy.” 

Bruised knuckles raise the chilled glass to frowning lips, the dark liquid passing through and Dina swallows with the lump that trails down Ellie’s neck. Her strong hand setting the glass back against the wood with a vibrating thud.

“Good,” a little too breathy and Dina turns back to the sink, “keep it that way.”

She can’t imagine the endless lonely nights without the tall woman at her counter. Their small banters, their bubble of comfort on cold evenings, the solace of each other's company. 

Dina doesn't know if the woman has other friends, has someone to come home to. But for Dina, the only person she ever looks forward to seeing is sitting six feet away and sipping on a whiskey like her life is sustained by it. It’s not that she hasn’t tried making more friends, hung out at other bars when she rarely has the free time, tried to mingle on sweaty dance floors flooding with desperation.

As much as she’s tried — which to be fair, isn’t much — there’s no one who’s caught her eye, or her interest, nobody who's given her the time of day like she’s tried with so many. 

Ellie was just by chance, and mostly forced by their mingling occupations. But the woman doesn’t have to stay as often as she has, as long as she has, as late as she always does. Dina thinks that has to count for something.

“I’ll try,” Ellie is smirking back at her now, a tilt to the left side of her mouth, a sparkling in the wooden embers.

Dina finishes drying and helps a couple that seated themselves on the other side before coming back to the woman, sliding a pack of ice against the wooden counter. She leans, her head on her hand on the countertop, eyeing the woman peacefully, watching torn knuckles hold the ice pack gingerly to the bruises coating her jaw. Something tugs at her chest seeing Ellie like this, gentle, peaceful Ellie — who doesn’t as much raise her voice let alone a hand. 

At least Dina would like to think that, but with the injuries the tall girl comes in with by the week, she guesses that’s not entirely true. 

Dina hears someone clear their throat down the bar and she sighs, Ellie’s lips curling into a knowing upturn. Their eyes hadn’t left one another since she pushed the ice across the counter, a calm understanding of passing thoughts without words. A meticulous conversation of dancing pupils. 

Dina takes a swig of Ellie’s whiskey as she stands to leave and the girl creases her eyebrows in annoyance.

_Burning and swelling._

Dina boops the tip of the freckled girl’s nose, “you’re cute when you’re grumpy,” and stalks off to attend whoever interrupted their peace.

By the time she’s finished making the customers drink, and the four others ordered after, Ellie’s spot sits empty. The crystal glass rimmed with leftover liquor, whiskey stones sitting a little warmer. Dina frowns as she takes the cool cup and places it in the sink. A wanting tugging at her chest, at fingers against smooth glass, at the ghost impressions of lips along the rim.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


There are moments when she’s alone that she can see her.

Fading eyes against the reflection of foggy glass.

A tracing smile in the streaks of neon lights passing by a cab’s front window.

Her hands around glasses, around throats, around doors, around a bar’s edge, around…

Dina turns the key in the front door and feels the pins slip into place. The cold air turns her warm breaths crystallin against the glass. She tugs the key free, ripples against the carved edges. And goes to turn, slipping the piece of metal, along with its ring and twins, into her pocket.

The woman stands behind the window, Dina sees her only for a second as she begins to walk away. A solid reflection in the glass, bouncing off the lanterns above. Far from the door, standing in the center of the bar and behind the counter, in front of the counter, in the counter. Her eyes are emeralds in the dim lighting. 

It’s like her figure is vibrating with the lapping flames, flickering.

Dina quickly turns to look again, the air around her dark and quiet in the night. The sound of distant cars, soft in the solace of the moon.

The glass of the door stands empty, as does the wooden interior of the bar.

She breathes, crisp air shaky, her own reflection peering back.

Dina heads home after the long day of work. Shaking away the vision and pulling up her hood as the beginnings of rain start to trickle.

Light tickings against the glass and parked cars, dull against the sidewalk and buzzing against metal sewers grates.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


There’s an evening in December where the frosty air doesn’t sit right on her tongue. The moon is high overhead as Dina walks home late that night, the stars peering from galaxies away. Her winter coat is warm, just an army green parka, old and worn from a decade of use, but it doesn’t keep out the bite. Her skin stings beneath the layers, and her hands grow numb with cold.

She rushes home, the pleasant surroundings no longer comfortable — store signs buzzing, open signs sitting dark, empty rooms with empty tables, waiting for the next day to come. The reflections off store windows, herself running past in the glass.

Dina finds her building at last and rushes into the entry, rotting and smelling of mold as the yellowing wallpaper peels around the door. She’s lived here since she could remember, since Hue dropped her off with a key in hand and a single room number. The floorboards bend on the stairs up to her place, creaking so loudly she believes they’ll give way.

It’s only a matter of months before this place starts to truly break down, it’s last-ditch efforts of stability already failing. 

She slams her shoulder into her door as the key turns, jolting it from its sticky position. The air isn’t much warmer in the building but at least the sharp wind was left at the entry. A wandering hand finds the light switch and flips it as she steps in, already slipping the jacket off her shoulders and throwing it towards the rack by the door.

The jacket hits the floor and the lightbulbs don’t click on. She flips it multiple times out of anger, already frustrated with this day. But this happens occasionally, more often than not in the winter months and horrible weather.

A dark foreboding home awaiting her presence until she can blindly fumble for the fuse box in her closet.

So she does just that, the front door closing behind her and leaving her in bitter black. The short girl makes her way down the hallway, kicking a box of something and cursing at the mess, it ricochets off a wall nearby. Another lump hits her foot, soft now. Clothes she presumes, though why she would have them in the hallway makes her frown. 

There are papers scattered, she can hear them rifling with each careful step, and she slows. It feels as though she's trudging through her household items. 

Piled and haphazard.

Dina speeds up.

But something in the hallway hits her knee and she drops, palms thudding into the ground to catch herself, too slow to stop her chin from bashing the floor. A crackle and a burning tear across her jaw. There’s the taste of blood lining her lips.

Her hands are on fire and there’s crunching beneath her shifting weight, shards of glass dig deep into the cracks of her hands and the soft skin of her face.

Dina cries out, the pain now roaring as her fingertips go numb, and she’s scrambling back to her feet. The tinkling sounds of glass that drop from her hands are followed by the warm streams of fresh blood, _drip_.

_Drip._

_This isn’t right_. 

Something, _someone_ …

The void of black around her, bubbling and thick, steals the air out of her lungs before she can absorb it. Tendrils of empty light creeping down her throat — drowning her with plentiful air.

Her eyes try again and again to focus, to expand towards light, to catch a glint of _anything_ — darting helplessly back and forth in emptiness. A shaky breath enters her lungs as she heads forward again. Cringing at the jolts of ice buzzing beneath her palms as her hands guide her along the wall, their stickiness sliding along the plaster, pushing the glass further into her skin.

She finds the doorway to her bedroom and fumbles for the closet, feet tripping on clothes scattered along the ground. Dina’s messy but not _this_ messy.

The cold metal of the box hits her hands and she slips along the surface until it’s popped open and she resets the entire apartment. A soft glow comes from outside her bedroom door, where she turned on the lights down the hallway. 

Dina pauses for only a second, to breathe, to _think_. But the pain comes full force again and she’s reminded of the state of her hands and her face. She slips into the bathroom and rushes to turn on the water, it’s like daggers upon the already torn wounds. Another cry rips from her throat, she bites down on her lip and winces at that too. Her reflection stares back, bloody and tired, tears rimming her eyes and dark bags forming beneath. Freeing her lip she sees it split completely, her tongue tasting the fresh taste of iron she just released from it.

And her hands, her _hands_. They shake beneath the water as she’s grown used to the searing pain, like it doesn’t exist and is screaming all at once. 

But there’s nothing.

The rips in her skin pool a viscous red that drips into the sink below — swirling down the drain, tinging the clear a sickening pink. Dina can feel them gape open and close with each movement of her fingers and her palms.

But there’s not a single piece of glass in the cuts.

She takes a careful finger and glides it over some of the wounds, and while they scream at her touch — the movement, the jostling of broken nerves — there’s nothing digging deeper in. Her hands feel empty.

The blood continues to pool as she looks to where she came from. The bathroom door stands wide open, a smear of blood from her hand along the wood, drops of blood litter the floor in a speckled path towards her. Not a single piece of glass glistens in her vision. 

Dina scrambles through her excuse of a medicine cabinet, finding a small first-aid-kit she had gotten at some corner drug store. It only has three feet of bandage — she makes it work. The white strips already begin to darken as her hands seep through, but she can’t focus on that. Instead, she walks out of the room and looks down the darkening hallway, immaculate and clean of any items she had tripped on just seconds ago. Missing was whatever had hit her knee, the scrap of clothing, the papers, the crunching — there are puddles of blood from where her hands and chin had landed.

They dye the pasty rug a dark red, sticking to every fiber. 

She goes back to the bathroom and looks in the mirror. Checking her chin and the long slice on her lip. They’ve smeared her chin by now and have stained her shirt. Looking at her hands, the bandages are dripping. They land in the waste bin beside the toilet a second later. 

Dina’s eyes are frantic as they scan for something, _anything_ , while still processing the lights and the hallway and the searing pain and the _mess_. 

“Fuck it,” a brown towel is torn from under the counter and she slams the cupboard. A sharp crack in the small space.

Dina just holds it between her hands, squeezing it with such force as she feels the tears finally drip from her eyes. The pain more incredible than she ever could have imagined. Her vision is muddled watching the small drops soak into the fuzzy cloth between her hands. 

Her mind spirals as it tries to wrap around what just happened. The tumbled furniture, the strewn clothes, the endless shards of glass. Dina cries more as fear flows through her chest and out, panic without reason, _with_ reason. Without.

She wishes — for a sliver of a second — there was a world where she could trust her reality. Could trust her eyes, her hands, her very senses of existence.

What is there to believe in a world of everything and nothing, all at once and never at all?

She blinks at the towel and feels her tears give to gravity. Sticky palms growing crusty and cramped as she doesn’t loosen her grip on the fabric.

Dina walks the perimeter of her apartment, turning on every light she’s allowed. Shadows fade one by one as dying bulbs buzz and clear the spaces of darkness. She can breathe a little easier now that nothing is hiding from view. Nothing but anything. Nothing but everything that disappeared with the dark.

The rooms are exactly as she left them, dirty in their lived-in clutter, clean in the girl’s sense of organization. Dina doubles back several times, feeling every surface with her legs, with her roaming, bunched hands.

There’s nothing.

Only three streaks of blood and a crying woman losing her goddamn mind.

  
  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> I seem to have a thing for year-long hiatuses. 
> 
> Hope you enjoyed it! Please tell me what you think, what you liked, your cOnsPiRacIESSSS
> 
> If you want to talk further hmu at lunarlyiridescent on tumblr!!


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